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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29099505">Ghostly Whispers Haunt Me In My Dreams but I Weep When I Wake</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Armos/pseuds/Armos'>Armos</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>M/M, Possessive Behavior, Unreliable POV, Will Graham gets treated for it tho, Will can see her but can't speak to her, Will is just trying to like live life, and a real boyfriend, encephalitis made worse by being haunted, gothic style, mischa is tethered to hannibal, when you have a ghost boyfriend, will can see ghosts</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 13:20:39</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,387</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29099505</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Armos/pseuds/Armos</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Ever since he was a small boy Will was able to experience things no one else could understand.  Figures, figments, colors, and fragments.  The touch of a long lost lover, the smell of home cooking, glimpses of figures in the corner of his eye.  The lingering presence of the dead hung around him like a shroud, choking like wisps of smoke.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Matthew Brown/Will Graham, Matthew Brown/Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter, Will Graham &amp; Mischa Lecter, Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>54</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Hannibal Flash Fic #004</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Ghostly Whispers Haunt Me In My Dreams but I Weep When I Wake</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Ever since he was a small boy Will was able to experience things no one else could understand.  Figures, figments, colors, and fragments.  The touch of a long lost lover, the smell of home cooking, glimpses of figures in the corner of his eye.  The lingering presence of the dead hung around him like a shroud, choking like wisps of smoke.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>People contributed his ability to understand murderers purely because of his abilities to empathize, to understand, them.  Get in their heads.  Sometimes it was as simple as the lingering presence of the dead latching onto him with their desperation, their final moments, making him gasp and wail in the middle of the night.  Ghosts were very real, though not in the way people expect, and Will just happened to have the ability to see them where someone else might merely feel a chill down their spine.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sometimes, the call of the dead would cover his eyes and drive him into the void of the night- only letting him open his eyes and see the world around him when the skin on the bottom of his feet is cut open and broken, a trail of bloody footprints following behind him, and he is lost and alone in the middle of a death pit.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>This is one of those moments.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He blinks and finds himself tromping through the brush, trees bordering him on all sides as tall and imposing creatures.  He does not know where he is or how he has come to be in such a place- it is cold and murky, not quite night but the sun is lowering from behind the tops of the trees.  He does not have his phone.  Winston is not by his side.  The last thing he remembers is leaving Hannibal’s office, walking to his car dripping with irritation and cynicism.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ahead of him lies a crumbling home, old- very old- and shrouded in something sad and distant.  He feels himself sigh and he makes his way into the empty rubble.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A lone, broken, piano rests in the center of the room.  It is old and dusty- missing keys and wood paneling.  Will feels drawn to it like a moth racing towards the light that will burn it’s wings off its body.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He steps closer.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The stuffy smell of tobacco drifts lazily around him.  An echoing melancholy piece drifts around him, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Beethoven’s Adagio ma no troppo</span>
  </em>
  <span> (</span>
  <a href="https://youtu.be/BP84TczbAc4">
    <span>https://youtu.be/BP84TczbAc4</span>
  </a>
  <span>) </span>
  <span>comes to mind.  He does not question where the knowledge comes from- only that it exists now in his mind.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He stops and observes.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He sees glimpses of a man, dark hair cropped short and shadows of stubble on his face.  His mouth seems to have a permanent curl to his lips, as though he gives a lot of cruel smiles.  His fingers drift on the keys with a quiet confidence, his face shrouded.  He seems to be laughing to himself, internally, at something sad and distant.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Will can taste the melancholy in the air.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He steps closer still.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He glances at the man’s clothes.  He’s wearing a frock coat, patched on the elbows, though it looks relatively new otherwise.  A cheap coat with cheap material- easily ripping at the seams.  His trousers were narrowly fitted with a type of strap at the feet of the legs to maintain a streamlined appearance.  Will could see a cravat wrapped around the man’s neck tucked into a white stiff high-collared shirt.  Will assumed the man wore a waistcoat under the frock coat.  His clothing was notably lower end material, the sign of a pauper in a time that was unforgiving to the poor.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The man suddenly jerks, his whole body convulsing with the force of his coughing and hacking.  A splatter of red appears on the sheet music resting in front of the man covering vital notes.  The man shoves away from the piano, still gasping for air that won’t come.  He fumbles in his pocket for a pipe- needs the relief of tobacco in his body to numb the pain in his lungs.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Will feels everything, coughing and gagging on the air in time with the man, and he feels blood dribbling down his chin.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The man takes a desperate drag from his pipe but it does nothing to calm the hacking.  It makes it worse, adding a new burn and pain to his lungs.  He will die here- pale and shaking and bloody all along his front.  Consumption is not a friend of man.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Will can feel his eyes rolling back in his dead.  Perhaps he will die here as well.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He blinks.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He is standing outside the crumbling home, the smell of tobacco covering him from head to toe.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He glances up and his eyes meet the man’s.  He gazes down, eyes burning and bright, as though he can actually see Will where he stands.  They stand- transfixed- staring at each other.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Will blinks again.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The man is gone.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Will turns around and uses the stars peeking out from between the branches of the trees to find his way back to society.  He finds himself on a nondescript street in Baltimore.  He finds his car sitting off in the road, a few minutes away, with the driver’s door wide open.  He slides in, a miracle to find his keys still resting inside untouched, and he makes his way home.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When he glances in the rearview mirror he swears he sees the burning eyes of the man staring back at him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The next day he sees Dr. Lecter at a crime scene, brought in to </span>
  <em>
    <span>ground him, anchor him, </span>
  </em>
  <span>to the present.  Every time he looks at the man it’s hard to ignore the sad, skinny, little wisp of a girl latched onto his back.  She gazes at Will with her big sad eyes and whispers, pleads, with him in a language he doesn’t understand.  He wonders if she is perhaps a lost child of the doctors, perhaps a relative, tethered to this man like a dark shroud of grief.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He cannot count the amount of times he’s woken in the night outside of his home, the feeling of snow burning his skin and gnawing hunger in his gut since he first glimpsed her latched onto the psychiatrist’s back in Jack’s office.  His anger and irritation at the doctor’s invasion of his mental landscape, those probing eyes, sent him away before he could process the sad eyes she peered at him with over Dr. Lecter’s shoulder.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tonight he dreams of pianos and tobacco and burning lungs.  He wakes up drenched in sweat and blood in his mouth.  In the bathroom mirror he sees burning eyes, intense and focused on his face.  It seems he’s brought something home with him.  He ignores the man.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Will eats his bland cereal and heads out to work.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He barely makes it through his day, the girl’s sad eyes pleading with him the entire time.  He can hardly focus on Dr. Lecter as he speaks, quietly and calmly, as Will attempts to dissect and understand this Ripper kill.  She is whispering too loudly in his ear.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He throws up in a bush.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>In the car he tries to drown out the sound of the piano with loud clanging noise, things he can hardly call music, and all it gives him is a headache.  He arrives home, feeds his dogs, and falls asleep with a bottle of whiskey in his hand.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The dream that night is more vivid- the man in the frock coat and short cropped hair is not in the home Will first saw him.  He is in a bland room, white blank walls, and screams echoing down the corridor.  He is imprisoned.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He has committed the crime of </span>
  <em>
    <span>otherness</span>
  </em>
  <span>- his family caught him kissing another man.  He is deemed insane for his homosexuality- and not for the dark purple bruises of violence on the other man’s neck.  He choked him as they kissed.  He remained calm the entire way to Spring Grove.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Will wakes up, shaking and sweaty.  He is standing in his shower under a cold spray.  He wipes his face and it comes back bloody.  He is having a nosebleed.  This ghost is more influential than most.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He lets his dogs out and gets ready for the day, even though it is still several hours until daybreak, and eats bland cereal.  He wonders if the good doctor’s sensitive nose will pick up on the smell of tobacco and assume Will has a nicotine habit.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He takes coffee to work with him, long gone cold by the time he gets to Quantico to study the body.  Dr. Lecter hovers over his shoulder and </span>
  <em>
    <span>she </span>
  </em>
  <span>hovers over his.  He is surprised to see the doctor here, usually forgoing viewing the bodies in the lab.  Will assumes it is the stench of decay and chemicals.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He is intently studying Will’s face, which is not out of place, but it feels like a brand on his skin.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He feels the wisps of a hand wrapped around his neck, lips softly pressed against him, as he listens to Price and Zeller exchange ideas on murderous intent.  They are wrong as usual.  He doesn’t bother correcting them this time.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dr. Lecter looks slightly displeased by the time they break and leave the lab.  Will feels like it’s his fault somehow.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>That night a name comes to him in his dreams.  </span>
  <em>
    <span>Matthew Brown, released from Spring Grove- cured of his mental disease of homosexuality.</span>
  </em>
  <span>  Will wonders what life would be like for him in 1830.  If he would be locked away and subjected to torture to </span>
  <em>
    <span>cure</span>
  </em>
  <span> him of his mental ailments.  Probably.  He understands Matthew a little better now.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Will hears the girl a little louder today, as he sits in Dr. Lecter’s office for his appointment.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Jis valgys tave. Jis valgys tave</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” she repeats, over and over.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He does not understand and apologizes to her for it in his mind.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Will asks Dr. Lecter about the history of psychiatry, about Spring Grove.  He answers Will’s questions about electro-shock therapy and lobotomies with curiosity in his shuddered eyes.  Will says he was just curious to know.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When he leaves he feels arms tight around his middle.  He looks down and sees the girl, crying, as she hugs him at the door.  He lingers in Dr. Lecter’s office doorway for far too long to seem natural.  He does not explain, though he can feel those eyes boring into his back.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>In his dreams that night, Matthew asks for a duet.  Will tells him he doesn’t play piano beyond Chopsticks.  Matthew laughs and tells him in his dreams he can do anything, even play the piano.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They play Beethoven together,</span>
  <em>
    <span> The Creatures of Prometheus Overture </span>
  </em>
  <span>(</span>
  <a href="https://youtu.be/zKdQ70f4GY4">
    <span>https://youtu.be/zKdQ70f4GY4</span>
  </a>
  <span>), and Will wakes up with cramps in his fingers.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He is invited to Dr. Lecter’s home later that evening for a private dinner.  Will plucks at the keys of his harpsichord in his study and the doctor looks at him with fiery eyes.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You play Beethoven?,” he asks.  “When did you start learning the classical arts?  As a small child, I presume.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Will tells him he doesn’t play.  He was just plucking random notes.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He leaves the doctor confused to go throw up in his guest bathroom.  He comes back up from the toilet with a nosebleed and a horrible cough.  Matthew is hovering behind him, glaring into the mirror.  He is angry.  Will does not know why.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Later that night Matthew kisses him, obsessive and feverish in his sleep.  Will does not fight it.  Matthew smiles.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dr. Lecter plays Vivaldi’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>La Stravaganza </span>
  </em>
  <span>(</span>
  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QP73569coeo&amp;ab_channel=SofienNahdi">
    <span>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QP73569coeo&amp;ab_channel=SofienNahdi</span>
  </a>
  <span>) during their next session.  The little girl has taken to Will when he visits the doctor for their conversations.  She sits in his lap and twiddles with his curls as he and the doctor discuss death and morality.  Will feels like he should feel concerned, speaking of morbid topics in front of a child, but she is already dead.  She cries everytime he leaves.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Matthew glares at her from Will’s other side every time with an angry possessive twitch to his jaw.  Will recalls the feeling of soft lips against his as he chokes and he wonders if Matthew could bruise him like that too.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Will begins losing time.  His mind is on fire.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There are too many bodies and killers.  Too many ghosts preying on his mind.  It’s too much.  He comes to his senses in the aftermath of a seizure, a new development in his life, to find himself standing outside Dr. Lecter’s home with a twitch in his hand and rage burning in his chest.  He worries about Matthew’s influence and goes home.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The little girl stares at him from a window, eyes large and pleading.  He almost thinks she is telling him to come inside.  He is not sure if she can tell he is battling the urge to kiss and choke as he stands in the driveway, caught between loneliness and rage at the doctor.  He does not understand his own anger.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The doctor must have heard the commotion of his car coming into the driveway, though Will is not sure how he drove from Wolf Trap to Baltimore in his fugue state, and opens his door.  When he sees Will standing in his t-shirt and boxers in his driveway, looking confused and lost, he beckons him inside.  It feels simultaneously insidious and protective.  It wraps around Will like a cloak.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The doctor kisses him that night, hand resting lightly against his neck counting his pulse.  He coughs into his nightshirt and it comes stained away with blood.  Dr. Lecter does not flinch from it, observes it with mild curiosity, and tucks him away in bed.  He shivers and cries in his sleep with tight possessive arms around him.  He cannot tell where Dr. Lecter begins and Matthew ends.  He is suffocating between them.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The girl does not enter the room throughout the night.  She is there for breakfast.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She looks so hungry and Will wants to offer her his food but she looks disgusted, revulsed, by his plate.  He wishes she could tell him why.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He calls in, taking a sick day from work, and goes home.  He sleeps in a sweaty pile, his dogs littered about the room.  He dreams of Matthew, full of rage and screaming at him, but he can’t make out his words.  They are muffled but loud.  His eyes look betrayed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Will wakes up crying.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dr. Lecter calls, checking after his health.  He is coming over when his appointments are done, worried about Will’s sickly state.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The doctor arrives and Matthew is latched onto him, like a possessive leech.  He glares at the doctor for invading their home.  He hums against Will’s ear every time Dr. Lecter opens his mouth to speak.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Will excuses himself to throw up.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He comes back to a worried doctor, affection and concern in his eyes, who declares he is staying the night to monitor Will’s symptoms.  Matthew huffs, annoyed, over his shoulder.  Will is too busy trying to stay awake and aware.  His brain is burning in his skull.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He passes out.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Matthew is less angry, when he visits Will in his dream.  He is not muffled and loud.  He is calm, telling Will he is sorry for his outburst.  He wants Dr. Lecter to leave.  He wants the girl to leave.  He wants Will to </span>
  <em>
    <span>see</span>
  </em>
  <span> him and no one else.  He loves Will.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It makes Will feel lonely.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He wakes up cocooned in Dr. Lecter’s arms.  The doctor ushers him into the shower and he goes to cook breakfast.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When he emerges he sees Matthew silently observing Dr. Lecter as he moves about Will’s small rustic kitchen, as though he is at home and at peace.  The little girl is sitting at the table, feet dangling above the floor.  She smiles at Will.  Will tries to smile back, more of a twitch to his mouth than anything substantial.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She turns her attention back to the doctor, a frown mars her face as he cooks.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Will sits in the only unoccupied seat at his table.  Matthew smiles at him, strained, as though holding back his rage.  The girl smiles at him again, sad and pleading.  The doctor turns to him and smiles, something hidden and mirthful in the tilt of his lips.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Will’s brain burns and he accepts his plate, his nose dripping blood onto the eggs.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He eats.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Everyone stops smiling.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dr. Lecter comes forward quickly and snatches the plate away.  He presses a handkerchief to Will’s face and asks him something.  He can’t hear him over the girl whispering in his ear and Matthew humming in his other.  He feels like he is adrift on a raft at sea, storm crashing against his brain.  It’s too much.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He feels his eyes roll back in his head and everything whites out.  All he hears is white noise.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He wakes up to a calm but worried doctor who is taking his vitals.  He is murmuring under his breath- something about brain diseases and “too advanced already” and “taking you to the hospital.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The hospital diagnoses him with encephalitis.  He is never alone- always has some form of company in his hospital room.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dr. Lecter insists he call him Hannibal.  He brings him soup daily and checks his vitals, untrusting of the other doctors to properly do their jobs.  Will thinks he has control issues- trust issues- but keeps his mouth shut.  The girl curls into Will’s side and sniffles when he visits.  Matthew curls on his other side.  Sometimes Hannibal falls asleep in the room, grasping Will’s hand with his cold fingers.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Will wonders if he only attracts the dead.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jack tries to bring crime scene photos to him while he recovers in his hospital room.  He thinks it’s the first time he’s ever seen Hannibal visibly angry- snatching the photos from Jack’s hands and shredding them in front of him.  He tells Jack to leave as he throws the scraps of paper in the trash can.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>By the time Will is released, he feels better.  His brain isn’t lit on fire with disease.  Matthew looks strangely despondent, disappointed.  Lonely.  Will thinks he wishes Will was dead too- stuck together for eternity with only each other for company.  Will wonders if he’ll be aware he’s dead when he dies, if he’ll linger as Matthew and the girl do.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hannibal makes him move into his sprawling Baltimore home, saying it’s temporary in a tone that suggests permanence.  Will doesn’t argue once he learns his dogs are already on the property.  He misses his house but he’s very tired and can’t stay awake very long so he just goes with it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The first time he and Hannibal have sex he sees the girl- </span>
  <em>
    <span>Mischa,</span>
  </em>
  <span> he learns one night as Hannibal cries silently into his shoulder- leave.  The experience is very surreal for Will, Hannibal and Matthew swapping faces during the act- different voices in his ear- different hands touching him everywhere.  He feels like he’s drowning.  He’s filled with love by the dead.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Now, Matthew and Hannibal seem to meld together- even when separate.  Will has accepted it.  He’s careful not to say the wrong name out loud.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Matthew seems to have stopped fighting to get Hannibal away, accepting his role as Will’s living lover.  He can enjoy Will by proxy- privately- in Will’s dreams.  He loves Will and experiences him in the only way that can only be enjoyed by the two of them- something Hannibal cannot touch.  They play duets at the piano in Will’s dreams.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mischa latches onto Will, looking at her brother with a confusing mixture of horror and love.  Will thinks of Abigail and her father and carefully stops thinking.  Hannibal is followed by the impressions of death but he is kind and attentive and broken enough to hold Will in place.  Will considers he may end up a ghost in Hannibal’s halls if he were to try and leave the man, go back to Wolf Trap with his dogs- his love is overbearing and stifling and it fills Will to the core.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Will is a man loved by death and he has long learned to accept it.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>"Jis valgys tave. Jis valgys tave"- He will eat you.  He will eat you.</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
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